World Masters Athletics Indoor Championships begin Tuesday

3/24/2014

With the 2014 World Masters Athletics Indoor Championships beginning Tuesday, March 25 at SYMA, a sport and event center in Budapest, Hungary, 141 American athletes will represent the United States as a handful of recent USA Masters Indoors record setters vie for a place in history on the world’s stage.

USA Masters Indoors champions and new record holders competing in the event include Nolan Shaheed, Brandi Bernert and Kathy Martin. Three of the four members of the Southwestern Sprinters 4x200-meter relay team that ran 1:34.72 at USA Masters Championships, will also be present as John Cormier, Marcus Shute, Sr., and Robert Thomas, Jr., take to the track.

Shaheed (Pasadena, Calif.), 64, is coming off of a strong USA Masters Indoors performance, where he dominated the field by nearly a minute in the 3,000 meters, crossing first in the M60-64 division with a time of 10:23.42.

Kathy Martin (Northport, N.Y.) continued her dominance in the distance events, breaking the previous world record in the W60 800 meters in 2:39.41. Martin also won the W60 mile in 5:47.25, easily surpassing the previous world record of 6:02.49, set in 2003.

Another one to watch is Charles Allie (Pittsburgh, Pa.), who was awardd Best Masters Athlete of the Year by World Masters Athletics in 2013, when he competing in the M65 division to break outdoor world records in the 200 (24.65) and 400m (56.09) and set an indoor world mark of 25.41 in the 200m.

Competition begins at 800 a.m. local time in Budapest with the 60m Hurldes firing off as the first event.